Cruisin’ Down the Colorado… …On a Sunday Afternooooon… (Sing along with u

Cruisin’ Down the Colorado……On a Sunday Afternooooon… (Sing along with us is you wish: http://tinyurl.com/nlmoeg4)You can now go rafting down the Colorado River, including the Grand Canyon, from the comfort of your own computer chair via Google Earth’s new “street view” images. Well, to be precise, these should be called “raft view” images. With the help of American Rivers, Google put this ride together that takes us as armchair rafters down hundreds of kilometers of the river, down 6 million years of canyon formation, and into two billion years of geologic history. Chris Williams reminds us that through these views you can witness the river’s modern-day environmental decline, including high water marks from the 1950’s documented by driftwood deposits, and the increasingly mucky accumulation of sediments along the river approaching Lake Mead.But no one needs to remind us of the awe-factor that the canyon walls invoke. The raft views allow for looking up, looking close, and looking into the gorgeous factor of this, the world’s most glorious gorge.This virtual rafting trip doesn’t replace the excitement of a real rafting trip, and doesn’t allow for the stops a geologist needs to bash around at the rocks, but hey – it’s dry, we don’t need sunscreen, and for those of us scattered all around the globe it gives us access to a trip that in the real world we can only dream about!Thank you American Rivers and Google for this fantastic trip!Annie RPhoto courtesy National Park Service.Access this virtual rafting trip and read about it at:http://www.americanrivers.org/http://google-latlong.blogspot.gr/2014/03/explore-americas-most-endangered-river.htmlhttp://techcrunch.com/2014/03/13/google-maps-now-lets-you-paddle-down-the-colorado-river-in-street-view/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fbhttp://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/parks/grca/index.cfm -- source link

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